‘Trunk Lady’ Identified 53 Years After Body Found: St. Pete Police

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — After 53 years, the victim of St. Petersburg’s “oldest and most infamous cold case” has been identified through a DNA match, according to a St. Petersburg Police Department news release.

The woman, referred to as “Trunk Lady” for the past five decades, finally has a name: Sylvia June Atherton. The mother of five was from Tucson, Arizona.

Her body, wrapped in a large plastic bag, was placed in a black steamer trunk that was found in a wooded area behind a restaurant at 4200 34th Street S. on Oct. 31, 1969, police said.

Atherton had visible injuries to her head and had been strangled with a man’s Western-style bolo tie. She was partially clothed in a pajama top, the agency said.

She was buried in a grave marked “Jane Doe” in Memorial Park Cemetery, 5750 49th Street N. Her body was exhumed on Feb. 10, 2010, with help from Dr. Erin Kimmerle and the University of South Florida Department of Anthropology.

Investigators tried multiple times to identify Atherton since then, using her teeth and bone samples, but the samples were too degraded.

This year, Wally Pavelski, a cold case detective with SPPD, found an original sample of her hair and skin that was taken during the original autopsy and sent it to Othram Labs in Texas, police said.

In April, a DNA profile resulted from the sample and DNA profiles were taken from her children to confirm her identity.

Atherton, who was 41 when she died, had several children. Pavelski contacted her daughter, Syllen Gates of California, who was 9 years old when her mother disappeared.

She told police that her mother left Tucson for Chicago, Illinois with her husband, Stuart Brown; her 5-year-old daughter, Kimberly Anne Brown; her adult son, Gary Sullivan; and her 20-year-old daughter, Donna Lindhurst and son-in-law, David Lindhurst.

Gates and her 11-year-old brother were left in Arizona with their father from a previous marriage. Sullivan eventually returned to Tucson to live with them.

Pavelski learned that Stuart Brown died in 1999 in Las Vegas, Nevada, but there was no mention of a wife in his court records.

Police have unanswered questions in the case, including who killed Atherton? They also haven’t been able to locate the daughters who moved with her, Donna Lindhurst and Kimberly Brown.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Pavelski at 727-893-4823.